Leland Payton pondering jumping into a book project while at Hannibal, Missouri’s Lover’s Leap.
Our last two books were on Ozark rivers – the James and the Osage (although it heads in the prairie plains of Kansas). Both streams have folklore about cliffs where Indian princesses jumped to their deaths over parental interference in their love life. These struck us as bizarre and aroused our curiosity. Researching these tragic stories that didn’t jive with our impressions of Native American culture we ran across Mark Twain’s satire on Lover’s Leaps. In Chapter 59 “Legends and Scenery” in Life on the Mississippi (1883) Twain wrote of encountering a garrulous passenger on the upper river who tells a story of a broken-hearted Indian maiden who leaps from a bluff. In a departure from other such tales she doesn’t die but lands on her cruel, controlling parents, killing them. Then she is free to marry the brave her parents opposed and lives “happily ever after.” Of course, Twain’s telling is marvelously arch – and it reminds us how much he imitated Mel Brooks.
So Crystal and I, in late March 2017, drove to Hannibal, Missouri to decide if there might be a book in these tear jerking tales. That leap in Twain’s spoof is off Maiden Rock, Wisconsin – too far for a casual drive. Hannibal, on the other hand, does have a quite well-known Lover’s Leap. Mark Twain loved Hannibal and Hannibal loves Mark Twain. Perhaps there the spirit of the writer would whisper “go or no” in our ear.
Crystal Payton took the cover photograph of Lover’s Leap Legends and ended up with more interior shots with a much smaller camera than husband Leland.
Cardiff Hill, another Hannibal bluff, is prominently featured in several Twain books. He published nothing about Hannibal’s Lover’s Leap, though he knew about it – the legend saw print before the Civil War. Today the overlook is a city park. A short version of its legend is cast in a small bronze plaque. While we were taking pictures, cars arrived and people strolled along the protective fence gazing out over the river and town.
In Life on the Mississippi, geography including cliffs are sharply realized. Norman Mailer thought Twain, a pretty promising writer but was critical of him for stealing so much of his stylistic delineations of landscape from Ernest Hemmingway. Twain’s setup for his leap satire was a passage on “the majestic bluffs that overlook the river.” That and the public’s attraction to the Lover’s Leap geography, along with the promise we could like Twain make fun of Romanticism suggested we should proceed. We dedicated the book to the godfather of American realism:
FOR MARK TWAIN
Who diagnosed America’s sentimental romantic infection.
Alas, his injection of realism was not a cure.
That moment Crystal took my picture with my elbow on the fence at Hannibal’s Lover’s Leap may not be the exact second all this jelled, but then it could be. Mark Twain proved you could get by with mocking sentimentality and get paid for it, a good trick.
A folio by Crystal and Leland Payton of Hannibal, Missouri’s Lover’s Leap and Mark Twain’s visible imprint on the town. Twain’s linkage of geography with folklore (which he thought unreliable but intriguing) was a guide to us in writing a book on Lover’s Leaps. Lover’s Leap Legend will be published February 2020.
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